Overcoming Fear Of Failure | Ep9

Michael Hersh, MD

[00:00:00] Ever find yourself right at the edge of something you really want a new role, a different pace, a life that feels more like yours. But you just can't, you can't take that first step. Not because it's impossible, not because it's out of reach, but because deep down you're wondering. What if I fail, or worse?

What if I succeed and everything changes? Today we're talking about that moment of hesitation, the quiet fear that lingers just below the surface, and how to find the courage to move anyway.

So today we're talking about something most of us experience, but never really talk about. That's the fear of failure. Not just some vague [00:01:00] idea, but the real fear that keeps us from making moves. We know we want the kind that quietly shapes our choices, our days, and sometimes our entire path. It's like a wall that exists between the life we're living and the one that we want so badly.

So physicians are used to success, right? It's how we have gotten this far in life, the grades, the training, the long nights, the impossible schedules. We've built careers on being reliable, competent, and driven, and we're used to aiming high and hitting the mark. But somewhere along the way that success can start to feel like something we have to protect.

Because the higher we climb, the more we stand to lose. Not just a job or a [00:02:00] role, but status, identity, the version of ourselves we've worked so hard to become. So when a new opportunity comes along, something uncertain, maybe even a little exciting, we hesitate. Not because we're not capable, but because the risk feels personal.

So let's start with a question. What does fear of failure really look like in your life? Is it that knot in your stomach when you think about trying something different? Is it the way you overthink every decision or keep yourself a little too busy to try something new? For most of us in medicine, it's not always easy to see.

We're trained to get things right. We didn't just work hard, we learned to perform in systems that reward precision and discipline and performance under [00:03:00] pressure. So when we slip up, it doesn't just feel like a mistake, it feels like we've been exposed. I remember when I started noticing this in my own life, fear didn't show up as fear.

It showed up as over-planning, staying in research mode, and telling myself the timing wasn't right. I remember spending six months building the perfect plan for a small pivot I wanted to make, and I never followed through. Not because I didn't want it, not because I wasn't ready, but because if I never started, I couldn't fail.

I thought that was being responsible, Protecting the life I had worked so hard to build, but really it was about avoiding the risk of doing it wrong, of losing what I had worked so hard to build. I've seen this in so many conversations with other doctors too. They'll say they want to [00:04:00] try something new, a creative project, a side venture, something to change the pace of life.

There's this underlying tension. What if it doesn't work? What if I lose the respect I've worked so hard to earn? What if I waste my precious time or worse my reputation? It's like we'd rather live in the discomfort of not trying than face the chance of falling short and honestly, that makes sense.

Especially when your whole life has been built on being the one who doesn't fail. So how do you see fear of failure show up in your own life? Sometimes it's loud and obvious, but more often than not, it's pretty quiet. A whisper of not yet. Or, I should be grateful for what I already have and not want more.

Or what if I regret doing [00:05:00] this? It can be subtle, but it shapes more than we think it does. So let's get curious for a moment. What is it about failure that feels so threatening? Why does the idea of not succeeding even once start to feel like too much to risk again, as physicians, we're trained to succeed.

Not just encouraged to succeed, but trained to succeed, to execute, to endure, to do hard things really well. We take pride in being prepared in getting it right the first time. We don't just value the success, we expect it from ourselves, and anything less can feel unacceptable. Failure doesn't fit into that picture.

It never really did. So somewhere along the line, success stopped being [00:06:00] a goal. It became the standard something we were supposed to deliver consistently, flawlessly. And when success becomes a given, failure starts to feel like a personal flaw, not just a missed outcome, but the shame of being exposed as a failure.

Like we've broken something that was never supposed to be broken. I see this pattern all the time in the physicians I coach. Incredible, capable, thoughtful doctors who are deeply drawn to something new, a project, a shift in direction, a quiet dream they've been carrying for years and still one fear keeps showing up.

There are so many things I want to try. I'm afraid I might fail. So that brings up the question, a question that is worth sitting with for a minute. [00:07:00] What is so bad about failure? I guess we can start with a definition, right? So failure is a lack of success. Fine, okay. But what is success? If you look up the definition, it'll say something like, it's the accomplishment of an aim or a purpose.

Okay, but whose aim, whose purpose? Who gets to decide if we've succeeded or not? Take Thomas Edison for example, if his only definition of success was inventing the light bulb on the first try. He would've been a catastrophic failure, but instead he reframed it. He is quoted as having said, I have not failed.

I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. Imagine as he was trying to invent the light bulb he had [00:08:00] stopped when he hit 8,000 or worse. 9,999. His persistence, his ability to keep going without letting fear of failure define him is literally the reason we can walk into a room, flip a switch, and turn the lights on.

Every time we turn on a lamp, we're benefiting from someone who wasn't afraid to try again, who wasn't afraid to fail. And yet here we are, most of us trained, skilled, and deeply motivated. Hesitating right at the starting line. Afraid we might not get it perfect the first time. Afraid we might look less than perfect.

And that brings us to something even deeper, even more familiar for many of us, which is perfectionism. And here's where things start to feel really personal. Because what often drives our [00:09:00] fear of failure isn't just the risk itself, it's the belief that we have to get it exactly right on the first try. That if we're not perfect, we're not enough, and that brings us straight to the heart of it.

Perfectionism. Voltaire said, “Perfection is the enemy of good.” And honestly, that line hits me every single time I've even started mentioning it with to patients in clinic, because most of us in medicine, we don't just know perfectionism. We live it. It's baked into how we're trained, how we measure ourselves, how we show up in the world, being thorough, exacting, precise.

It's how we keep people safe. And it's how we survive. But here's a truth I had to learn, and it didn't come from medical school; it came from physician coaching. [00:10:00] Perfectionism isn't always about high standards.

Sometimes it's just fear parading around in a fancy outfit. I once heard Brooke Castillo say perfectionism is for scared people.

And I'll be honest, that line stung a lot. I had prided myself on my perfectionism, but it wasn't because the line was harsh. It was because it named something I hadn't wanted to see in myself that sometimes my need to get it just right. It was really about fear, not discipline, not excellence, just fear.

In disguise. I'd always seen my perfectionism as a strength, the thing that got me here, the thing that made me good, but when I really sat with it, when I stopped defending it, I saw what it was costing me. Perfectionism [00:11:00] gave me cover. It let me say not yet, or I'm still figuring it out, or I'll try once I know how to do it right.

Of course, that moment never comes. There's always one more thing to tweak, one more thing to fix, one more reason to wait. Slowly, almost silently perfectionism becomes the thing that kills every dream before it even has a chance. What's been freeing, and I'll be honest, I am still a work in progress when it comes to this, is learning to shift the way I think about failure to separate the event from the identity.

Just because something I try doesn't work out doesn't mean I am a failure. It just means the thing didn't work. And that sounds simple and straightforward, but internalizing it. That's a whole other process, and still it's one of the most [00:12:00] powerful reframes I have personally experienced. Here's what I've come to see again and again, both in myself and in the physicians I work with.

The hardest part of failure usually isn't the failure itself. It's what we make it mean. It's not, that didn't work. It's, I didn't work. Not, this was a rough day, but I'm not cut out for this. And once that story takes hold, it's hard to recover. We start losing momentum, then confidence, then direction. And so to protect ourselves from that spiral, we do something that seems safer.

We don't try at all. We preempt the failure by failing ahead of time. We stay still. We talk ourselves out of it. We keep our ideas in our heads instead of bringing them out into the world where they [00:13:00] belong. But the irony is, we actually don't escape failure. Maybe we didn't fail at the new thing we really wanted to try, but the failure still happens.

It just comes later when we realize we never got the thing we wanted in the first place. We failed ahead of time. We suffer the failure, but what's worse? We never even gave ourselves a chance to succeed. And what's even harder to see sometimes it's not just the fear of something not working out that gets in the way.

It's the way we treat ourselves when it doesn't. For me, that's been one of the most painful parts. If I put myself out there and something flops even a little bit, I wouldn't just feel disappointment. I'd go straight to self-criticism. I'd question everything. My ability, my instincts, my self-worth, I'd make it mean I wasn't smart enough or [00:14:00] talented enough, or resilient enough.

There's not always a ton of grace in those moments. No gentleness, just pure judgment. So, of course, we avoid the risk to avoid suffering, the consequence of how we're gonna treat ourselves if things don't work out. Because, if failure means tearing myself apart afterward, why in the world would I ever take that chance?

Now we need to take a step back, zoom out and try seeing failure through a different lens. One that isn't so tied to shame or judgment, one that feels just a little more human, I think, about how kids learn to walk. They don't wait until they're sure they've got it down. They don't study gait mechanics or worry about how they'll look, or if they look silly, they just try.[00:15:00]

They roll, they crawl, they wobble, they fall, and then they get up again and again. If toddlers waited until they could walk perfectly, none of us would ever learn. But they don't. They fall forward into growth. Each stumble builds muscle. Each misstep brings them closer to walking. That's how we build anything.

So why, as adults, especially as physicians, do we believe we have to get it right the first time? Why do we treat learning as something we're supposed to already know how to do instead of chasing perfection? I wanna offer a different idea. Be more like Thomas Edison, be more like a toddler. Focus on the progress.

Take steps, even wobbly ones. Let failure be part [00:16:00] of the process, not the end of it. Have the courage to fail in public, and when it happens, because it will. Have your own back. Show yourself grace and what you learned, and then pick yourself back up and try again. That's what separates stuck from growing.

That is what moves us forward.

One of the most grounding shifts for me has been tracking the things I have done.

Not just the obvious wins, but every step. Every offer I put out into the world, every conversation I've leaned into, every time I tried, even if it didn't lead to something big, I keep a running list and I go back to it frequently because our brains don't store the winds by default. They clinging to the misses and the losses to the awkward moments, the [00:17:00] rejections, the plans that fell through.

So very frequently, and particularly when I hit a rough patch or when something doesn't go the way I'd hoped, I pull out my list, I go back and I remind myself of the effort, the courage, where I was and where I am now. The progress that often doesn't look like progress at first. Going back and reflecting really does help.

It brings me back. It reminds me that the path isn't about flawless execution. It's about showing up again and again, even when it's messy, even when it's slow, even when I'm scared, because the only way through is to keep walking.

I'm gonna offer one other thing. Here's the twist. Sometimes it's not failure. We're really afraid of sometimes. It's the fear that we're going to [00:18:00] actually succeed, that things are going to work out the way that we want them to. I know that might sound strange, but think about it. What if this thing that you really want, this thing that might change, everything actually works?

What if the thing you've been dreaming about takes off? What if the change happens? Then what? Then who will you have to be? What will you have to sustain? What will shift around for you? Because success doesn't just change your circumstances. It changes your sense of identity, your routines, sometimes your relationships, and that's a real thing, and it's worth being honest with yourself about it because sometimes what feels like fear of failure.

Is actually fear of change. So maybe the question isn't just, what if I fail? Maybe it's something deeper. What if I never give myself the [00:19:00] chance to succeed? What's the cost of that? What dreams quietly die in the background while we stay busy, productive, and safe? I don't have all the answers. I'm still working through a lot of this stuff myself, but here's what I've noticed.

The people I admire most, the ones who seem grounded, creative, and aligned, they haven't avoided failure. They've moved through it. They've failed sometimes very publicly, very painfully, and then they keep going. They didn't let failure define them. They used it. As information as a stepping stone, they saw failure as a data point, not a diagnosis, as part of the path, not proof they didn't belong.

So maybe today is the day you try something, not because it's guaranteed to [00:20:00] work, but because you're done letting self-doubt hold the reins. Maybe today is the day you stop waiting for perfect, because failure, it's not the opposite of success, it's the doorway to it.

There are two sides of the same coin. You don't get one without brushing up against the other. So let me leave you with a few questions worth sitting with. What do you think about failure? What do you make it mean about you? How do you speak to yourself when things don't go as planned? And maybe most importantly, would you ever speak to your child that way if they didn't succeed?

And if not, and for most of us, the answer is no. Why is it okay to speak to yourself that way? How can you try to choose words that you would use with [00:21:00] your children to support them when things don't work out? I hope this gave you something to think about, something to notice in yourself, maybe even the permission to stop aiming for perfect and start aiming for real.

Here's a question for you to really think about. What would you try. If you promised yourself you'd be kind even if it didn't work out, because that might be the shift that changes everything, not the outcome, but the way you hold yourself through it. Thank you so much for spending some time with me today.

I know this path isn't easy and it's definitely not always clear, but you're not alone in it. if something in this episode struck a chord, if it put words to something you've been carrying, I'd love to hear about it. And if you're wrestling with fear of failure, just come back to that question.[00:22:00]

What would you try if you promised to be kind to yourself no matter what happened? So wherever this finds you, standing at the edge, stuck in the middle, or just beginning to imagine something new, I really hope you keep going. One step at a time. Take good care and I will see you on the next episode of Better Physician Life.